Obama Oil Spill Response (PHOTOS): President Tours A Gulf Coast Beach

President Barack Obama flew to the Gulf Coast today, on the heels of his press conference Thursday where he claimed full responsibility for the handling the oil spill. The President given a tour of a Louisiana beach, where he kneeled down to observe tar balls and was given a briefing on the cleanup efforts. Take a look at some of the highlights of Obama's trip.

1 of 8

1 of 9

First Slide

Previous Slide

@

President Barack Obama waves as he steps off of Air Force One at Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana, on May 28.

Japan Tsunami Debris: Bones Expected To Wash Ashore, Oceanographer Says

gadgets/slideshows/223989/slide_223989_930216_small.jpg

Tornado In France: F1 Storm Touches Down South Of Toulouse (VIDEOS)

Gulf Oil Spill Anniversary: Spills Around The World Since Deepwater Horizon

Dried Salton Sea Could Produce 'Clouds Of Toxic Dust' Under San Diego Water Authority Plan

Green Festival 2012: Fostering Community And Sustainability In New York City And Beyond

Earth Week 2012 Challenges: Reusable Bottle Wednesday

President Barack Obama waves as he steps off of Air Force One at Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana, on May 28.

comments(193)

featured comment

Reply | Share

Osmona said on 28 Friday 2010 pm31 3:48 pm: Maybe he should have stayed in Washington. Then you would have MORE to complain about.

Total comments: 193 | Post a Comment

1 of 9

Rate This Slide

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Seems Useless Looks Productive

• 
  1
• 
  2
• 
  3
• 
  4
• 
  5
• 
  6
• 
  7
• 
  8
• 
  9
• 
  10

Best Obama Photos

loading...

Best Obama Photos

UserName

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Top User Slides

← Prev|Next →

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

loading...

Users who voted on this slide

← Prev|Next →

loading...

Comments

[sciencefundie]

04:10 AM on 05/29/2010

TO ALL THE RESPONSE HATERS:

What do you really expect B.O. to do? Pop on a scuba suit, swim down a mile, whip out his unit and top kill it with an extended leak?

Oil companies (BP is this case since it's their dang well) are the only ones equipped with technology to stop this gusher, and do you really think it's in BP's interest to drag their feet on this? Honestly...

As for the containment effort, you could set up all the oil booms in the world and a spill of this magnitude is still gonna squeeze past in some places.

If you expect perfection in the response to something as huge, unique, and unprecedented as the current crisis, you're living with the wrong species...go find some hyper-intelligent aliens with wide-angle laser beams that can dissolve hydrocarbons or something.

[suzc]

08:39 AM on 05/29/2010

The point is, the containment effort has been Too Little Too Late. If the feds were in charge, why aren't there 100,000 people on the beaches and in the marshes? Why haven't they hired every out-of-work fisherman? After all, they print money like they knew what they were doing. They have massive resources at their fingertips. And this is the worst environmental disaster ever! I don't expect perfection. I expect attention and action 24/7. And I haven't seen it. (Thad Allen is a joke! But then so many old white guys have been promoted all their lives with little effort or competence on their part. His next job is apparently at BP.) There are very few REAL emergencies in life. But this is one of them. And it needed more than the lackidaisical response seen from all parties to date. (Maybe it's behind the scenes; but given the lack of results to date I don't think so.)

[oonamanoona]

01:51 PM on 05/30/2010

Only an idiot would think anyone believes Obama can stop this geyser. The federal government should have been in charge of clean up. The Army Corps of Engineers should have been building those sand bars to protect fragile wetlands. He needed to command -- he is the Commander in Chief

[jayes]

11:48 PM on 05/28/2010

Top Ten Misconceptions About Fuel Economy

http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/topten.jsp

[maxfax]

11:39 PM on 05/28/2010

Shame on the administration's advisers for not seeing their way to direct the President to stay over in the area, share a meal with families, listen to their stories. Poor judgment.

[TrueThis]

11:30 PM on 05/28/2010

If Obama would've paid for the WHOLE oil spill the rightwingnuts would be complaining about BIG government and carry around a sign misspelling the word: Socialist. You righty are a bunch unhappy clowns that's throwing any small minded issue around to see if it sticks.

The government is given you a day off for Memorial Day why can't the President take one too?

[cliffsiderock]

11:05 PM on 05/28/2010

Obama tours the beach for 3 hours then went back on his vacation??!!! Are you kidding me! Listen to James Carville on CNN. It takes a lot for a democratic die-hard like Carville to say something remotely bad about Obama and he was all over the president. Can someone make some honest and objective comments here pretending that Obama is not your first black liberal President? Let's pretend for a moment that GW Bush were still president and tell me how you feel about the performance of the federal government so far. Also, Obama said yesterday that the White House has been in charge since the beginning. Is he serious? So if he was in change and this is what we got? What the hell is going on in the WH?

[TrueThis]

11:21 PM on 05/28/2010

Carville was grand stand just as your comment.

[cliffsiderock]

11:49 PM on 05/28/2010

When your backyard is being destroyed and your president is doing a scam/photo op on a 3 hours symbolic beach tour complete with fake temp workers, you have the right to grand stand ...with pitchforks!

[suzc]

08:31 AM on 05/29/2010

Exactly!

I never begrudge the prez a vacation. He hasn't been "home" in a year. And he needs some down time. (I wouldn't have his job for anything!) But squeezing in a few hours for the biggest environmental disaster in history does seem unsatisfactory.

Now, when the prez IS in charge, you don't really NOTICE until it's almost over. But this is one of those times when everyone should KNOW who's in charge and what's being done. And the protection of the coastline has just not been forthcoming, clearly! And that's a lifetime of dead zone.

As I have thought on occasion heretofore, I think Mr. O. has some really poor advisers around him (along with some decent ones).

[MuchMadness]

11:04 PM on 05/28/2010

Back in the 1970's President Carter asked people to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat to save energy during the winter. Many Americans mocked him and rejected him.
Are Americans now willing to accept higher taxes on gasoline and restrictions on inefficient automobiles so that the U.S. demand for oil can be reduced to a point where it is possible for congress and the president to have some power over the oil companies? Are Americans willing to accept governmental restrictions on travel and trade?

[suzc]

08:34 AM on 05/29/2010

I put on a sweater and turned down my thermostat to 65. How about you?

When gas hit $3/gal, I stopped running to town for only three errands. Now it has to be six errands or an emergency. How about you?

The free ride is over for most Americans. The filthy rich will never be affected. Change is going to come, the easier way or the hard way. What I'm ready to accept is that EVERYONE pitches in, and that means those who have become filthy rich by fleecing the public, manipulating the system. I think all most Americans want is an even playing field and honesty on the part of those in control. Then we'll see what hard choices we will all make.

[RisingSundown]

10:59 PM on 05/28/2010

Excellent point made on AC360 that just lends to my argument that Obama is suffering from "bubble-itis". In his statement today, he mentions that Americans should visit the Gulf Coast but on this holiday weekend, where will he and his family be? How much of a boost to the psyche of Gulf Coast residents would it have been if the First Family came to vacation in their area for the weekend (you know, a little practice what you preach)? How inconvenient would it have been if at the very least the president had spent the rest of the day meeting with families, or stayed over night, going to more infected areas tomorrow to at least show that this problem is worthy of more than just a few hours of his physical presence? Something is not connecting, registering with this administration. Beware of "bubble-itis".

[MuchMadness]

11:12 PM on 05/28/2010

If the president did the things you mention, his critics would complain that he was just wasting time on empty gestures while neglecting his other duties. People should not wear their empathy on their sleeves. Nobody should be required to gin up a display of emotion to please someone else. I respect the president for not grandstanding and for having a reserved, somewhat stoic demeanor. People have different sorts of personalities, and I know that people who are naturally inclined to displays of emotion sometimes mistakenly take a lack of emotional display as a sign of indifference. That is not fair or true. People have different temperaments, that's all.

What I care about is actions, not feelings. I would like to see President Obama aggressively pursue legal actions against BP and against government regulators who were negligent or corrupt.

[suzc]

08:26 AM on 05/29/2010

You're right of course. (But I want BOTH.) I too appreciate his calm demeanor. And his speeches are usually comforting. But sometimes you have to get stirred up and I think this disaster is one of those times. Especially if he isn't going to command action. And it doesn't appear there is enough action on the coastline. (I have no idea why BP is playing with itself so long at the drill site but maybe they're doing all they can. Maybe they're just incredibly incompetent. Maybe it's an insoluble problem. In which case they should all be shot for creating it.)

I worry about his bubble but since I know he worries about it too I don't worry as much as usual with presidents. But he's smart enough to know when he's being used and I think he was being used yesterday. And I wonder why. I really wanted to see him in the marshes, where the oil has already killed so much life.

[MMJones]

11:21 PM on 05/28/2010

You'd rather have, oh, a McCain type of emoto-itis?

You want a president emoting all over the place? Sorry, that does not fly. The longer he remains in a place, the more disruptive it is for the work to continue -- the work he is fully aware of, I am sure. Being president involves an inordinate amount of security... especially this president.

This is the 21st century. He doesn't have to sit on the beach to get the sense of what is going on down there 24/7. This is the paramount subject on his, and our, mind this week. Yes, I would have liked more anger -- but he doesn't play all his cards at once, especially at times like this, involving impending disaster.

[saracenkiller]

10:19 PM on 05/28/2010

How much damage have the British Polluters done:

You NEED to watch this video from liveleak: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=524_1273510578

[nobleday]

10:09 PM on 05/28/2010

Pictures are better than Obama's blah blah inaction...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/anderson_cooper_360/

[gracie99]

08:23 PM on 05/28/2010

Obama, unfortunately, doesn't seem to do this sort of PR well.

If only Michelle Obama could take on more of an Eleanor Roosevelt role. She'd be excellent at that sort of PR trip and could spare the prez for things where his presence is needed.

It's easy to imagine an excellent PR trip with the First Lady helping suds down some oily pelicans and hugging a few fishermen's families, then making a stiring speech about how her husband is deeply concerned and working night and day on the problem back in DC.

[jan4insight]

09:43 PM on 05/28/2010

Most of us are more concerned about the situation than the PR.

[MMJones]

11:22 PM on 05/28/2010

You are kidding, aren't you.

[doctorj2u]

08:16 PM on 05/28/2010

Obama tours oil caked beach after hundreds of workers hired by BP were bussed in and cleaned it all day. The residents said they have not seen anything like that before. The workers were again picked up by busses at 4:30 PM after the president left. Now how stupid does British Petroleum think Americans are? Presidential advisors, are you listening?

[b0t23]

09:10 PM on 05/28/2010

ive read this two other times in comments, with absolutely no citation of a source for that information

ive seen the pictures and I dont see any groups of clean workers

[americancolonyinhell]

08:11 PM on 05/28/2010

The best the president can do is have a rather general, cursory knowledge of what's happening. Obviously he can't solve the problem himself. What he can do is marshal forces to deal with both the environmental and political problem. And, he must be candid with the American public.

[tc399]

08:18 PM on 05/28/2010

What planet are you posting from?

[americancolonyinhell]

08:26 PM on 05/28/2010

Saturn.

[Militarized]

08:09 PM on 05/28/2010

Wow, I support Obama but I was expecting some powerful photos that would demand some action from him and then I see..... this? This is WEAKSAUCE, he needs to go into those marshes and see first hand what is REALLY happening and he needs to hold BP accountable for shipping people in simply because he was there then shipping them out. My god, it turns my stomach over and over again.

[erdoc53]

10:10 PM on 05/28/2010

It was disturbing. Is BP setting up his tour? They seem to have everybody and everything under their boot. The photos were ridiculous.

[oldrwizr]

11:34 PM on 05/28/2010

Do you think Obama personally posted these pictures and that these represent the only things he saw and the only things he knows about the situation down there? I'm sure he has access to the internet and all the research that his people brief him with constantly with using all the technology that is available today that makes it possible for people to know what is going on in far away places without actually having to be there in person. BP does need to be accountable and they turn my stomach too. They are lying criminals

[suzc]

08:40 AM on 05/29/2010

Yes. I think that's the only thing he saw down there. A fairly clean beach with a few teeny tar balls. Dolphins playing in the water. Not the two dozen dead ones slimed with heavy oil in the marshes.

It looks like he's listening to the wrong people down there!

[nickfromla]

08:01 PM on 05/28/2010

Check out full video coverage of the BP Oil Spill; really compelling video too at: http://www.frequency.com/topic/bp-oil-spill/33855

[Memphis Blues Again]

07:58 PM on 05/28/2010

If Obama doesn't go to the location of the spill, then people say, "Where is he?".

If he goes to the location of the spill, people then say, "It's just a photo op. It's propaganda."

I feel sorry for Obama, because nothing he does will ever please the people.

[naschkatze]

08:07 PM on 05/28/2010

Oh come on. Look at the photos. Did Obama go anywhere near the heart of the disaster?

[gracie99]

08:20 PM on 05/28/2010

While of course it is silly for Obama to waste his time and energy going there, it probably had to be done for the PR value. But without going to some area with noticeable oil, even the PR value seems to be lost.

Couldn't stand Bush but have to admit he and his team understood photo-opping.

[b0t23]

09:11 PM on 05/28/2010

the heart of the disaster?
what on a robotic sub a mile down?

[TrueThis]

11:33 PM on 05/28/2010

You are so...right Memphis Blue.